TheExpatJournals.com

It seems that in life, everything is a trade off. I sit here on my terraza in La Cresta and am soothed by the up close view of a hummingbird while listening to a gecko sound off nearby. It’s light enough to see the hummingbird and that means the birds are beginning to chirp. This little guy is primarily green. There is another I’ve seen in the afternoon that is the most brilliant red and green in the light. And the quiet. It is so very quiet.

My apartment is built into the side of the hill that faces Via Espana. I see only green out of my lower windows and only sky out of the upper windows. It feels so completely isolated that I have had a hard time adapting. I said to friends, “I might as well be in the interior.” I do not hear a single car that passes on the street above me. Absolutely no one without a key to th security gate is going to walk by my apartment except for one neighbor who shares the steps with me. So, except for the fact that I can walk to Plaza Concordia in roughly 10 minutes, this feels like living in the woods. And that was the foremost appeal, and yes, it was a 180° reaction to the noise of Casco Viejo. While I may have found the peace and tranquility I longed for, I had not counted on missing the life that teams over there. It’s not the busloads of tourists roaming the Paseo while their giant buses idle noisily and spew diesel exhaust into my living room. It’s not the well-heeled Panamanians who dine in Casco Viejo. It is the pregnant air of possibility and the locals who share so willingly and so graciously. Busy, loud, abundant change, art space, fine dining, impromptu neighborhood hangs…these are the things that, once upon a time, made NYC great. They are also the very things that made Casco Viejo feel so comfortable for me. Driving into the neighborhood, you are instantly transported back into time and into a foreign, once grand, maze of aging and renovated beauty.

It’s a trade off. In La Cresta, there is no soul, there is no beauty tied to the past, there is no hustle or cobblestone or peeling paint. There is quiet. There is green. There is only one road in or out so no one could ever get lost like they inevitably do in Casco Viejo. Unlike the disease ridden, lethargic ugly mutts roaming the streets of Casco Viejo, I’ve only seen employees walking pure bred dogs on leashes up here.

It’s a trade off. And, of all things, yesterday I was thrown a serious curve ball. There was an apartment in Casco Viejo I looked at before moving here. The owner had not seen it in years and as a result of my interest and comments, obtained the keys this weekend so she could see the shape it was in. And it is rough. But it is still available to me should I so desire. If some work had been done, I might never have moved to La Cresta. So now, I have another decision to make. This apartment has the most amazing views, BUT…it is so close to a new restaurant as well as beside what once was an intolerably loud bar that is now for rent. And God only knows what will go into there. If I had to listen to the boom, boom bass of bad dance music until the wee hours every weekend, I would definitely go mad.

NOTE: I wrote the above when I first got here. Subsequently, I have learned the trade off of this spot and it’s jungle-like setting…intense humidity and that means I either run an AC inside all the time or things are fuzzy with mildew within 48 hours of being cleaned with either Clorox and water or Denatured alcohol and water. Snuggled into the hillside like this means no breeze. A couple of doors away, back towards the American ambassador’s residence is a huge satellite dish. The seams are covered in bromeliads. I should have realized what a warning signal that was. Bromeliads only grow in intense humidity.

I have, for example, one African bowl that is roughly 120 years old. It survived Africa. It survived NYC and never had a spot of mildew in Casco Viejo. But here, I have ended up soaking it in clorox and water which removed the beautiful patina of that century. And that, my friends, was a stab in my heart. I think the lack of trees in the immediate vicinity of apartments in Casco Viejo combined with the constant breeze and how all the buildings over there were designed with maximum air flow in mind helps keep the mildew at bay, not something you necessarily appreciate nor think about until it’ gone. Forget about the vessel I have made from an elephant’s ear. It may never recover.

I have been back to Casco Viejo five times in the two weeks I’ve moved here, including spending the afternoon of my birthday over there with a friend. I knew in the beginning that it completely captured my heart. I shouldn’t have doubted it. Now, I look across the bay at the beauty of it, especially lit up at night. And I’m reminded of sitting in NJ looking at the NYC skyline. From there, you are not a part of and can only admire from a distance and wish you were there. As someone once said, the best thing about NJ is the view of Manhattan.